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This week I had my first private lesson (first lesson ever, actually) with a coach, whom I’ll call Coach A. I’d wanted to start earlier, but due to slow lines of communication and some crossed wires, I ended up starting later than I’d expected.

The reason for my impatience is because I’ve been growing bored at the rink. I still go faithfully at least twice a week, usually three times, but there’s only so many times you can do a one-foot glide or a backward swizzle before you want to move on. I’ve been thinking up exercises for myself and finding some via Youtube, but I was getting to a point where I needed guidance, so it was a relief to finally get some.

Coach A ran through a lot of basic exercises, and thanks to the practice I’d been doing I was able to move on pretty quickly. Falling, dips, swizzles — those were easy, and we just ran through it once before moving on. Then to forward and backward pumps, forward and backward one-foot glides, and stroking. Coach A liked my stroking, and added a variation to challenge me. We ended the lesson by crossing one foot over the other on a line (from a standstill), in preparation for crossovers.

She said I have good balance and turnout, which was good to hear, and asked if I’d ever done dance. I haven’t, but I did martial arts as a teenager, and she thinks that must be it. I never equated martial arts with balance, but it makes sense, since a lot about kicking involves proper weight balance and transfer. I never did the crane kick from Karate Kid, but I do remember being made to stand on one foot for minutes at a time. SO while I didn’t have much power when kicking (I barely ever made a dent in those kicking pads), I had decent form.

The things we covered in the first lesson were mostly things I’d been doing on my own in some form, but I felt so much more confident after having a coach look at what I was doing and correcting my form. Even when I’d been doing something right, having that validation made a world of difference.